Table of contents

What is content infrastructure?

The cloud has forever changed the way we build software. As a result, development teams are re-architecting their software stacks to be more modular and more agile. Modern developers also have access to a new generation of cloud service providers that supply an infrastructure for analytics, email, SMS, authorization, payments, search, and so much more.

Contentful is not a CMS, Contentful is content infrastructure.

However, despite this shift, content has been left behind. Content still gets trapped in some type of Content Management System (CMS), either purchased, open source, or built in-house. But Contentful is not a CMS, Contentful is content infrastructure.

When you buy a CMS—whether traditional, headless, or decoupled—you are buying a website first-and-foremost. And then you can customize it to meet your needs by using an assortment of included features and plug-ins with varying complexity and potential security concerns.

A content infrastructure, on the other hand, starts with the data model—or in this case, the structured content. And it is built to fit into modern software delivery pipelines connecting to workflows and services used by both your developers and content creators.

Platform independence

Developers can have strong opinions on the best tool for the job. Perhaps you prefer Python over JavaScript? Or Ruby over PHP? But no matter what stack you prefer, content infrastructure has your back. We simply want you to be able to code in your favorite language without having to worry about the content backend architecture.

Build a staging environment in no time

Content infrastructure is designed to fit into your workflow. Our approach to treating content as a layer in your stack will help you to integrate content infrastructure into your team’s deployment pipeline.

An example of an integrated workflow is that Contentful allows you to separate content between staging and production environments via designated APIs.

How does Contentful’s content infrastructure work?

A key aspect of our content infrastructure platform is our Content Delivery Network (CDN). The CDN ensures that your apps and your users have fast and reliable access to the content they need. You create great content—we make sure it arrives on time, every time.

It’s all about API calls

No matter what kind of content you use our content infrastructure for, your content is always just an API call away. Be it text, images, VR objects, or anything else that can be digitally represented—you grab it from our content infrastructure with an API call.

It’s all JSON—both ways

You communicate with our content infrastructure using any combination of our four APIs:

All our APIs respond using JSON that you can integrate into any app or platform. You can also use JSON structured data to upload information and assets to our content infrastructure via the Content Management API.

Why is content infrastructure important?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our solution gives developers the ability to start small, using only what they need, and then confidently scale enterprise-wide with the success of their products.

Focus on code — not administration

Developers want to spend their time developing. Building apps and services that interact with our content infrastructure is the modern way to free developers from the burdens of managing an old-school, monolithic CMS. Worrying about database architecture, uptime, and scalability issues is now a thing of the past.

Content infrastructure adds a layer of security

With a centralized and hosted solution like content infrastructure, you get an extra layer of protection. You no longer have to stay awake at night wondering if your CMS is adequately patched to keep hackers out.

We take care of keeping your content secure so that you can focus on building great apps. And in true HTTPS everywhere fashion, we serve content using encrypted connection right out of the box.